Courts, governments, and corporations have adopted three distinct leadership philosophies during the last three decades: supervisory leadership, participative leadership, and team leadership. In team leadership, the supervisor acts as a facilitator as employees learn to function as a team. Self-directed work teams are a highly trained group of six to 18 employees, fully responsible for turning out a well- defined segment of finished work. Working in teams is a relatively new concept for the court, but any court office has an unlimited number of tasks and projects that teams can perform. Court leaders should examine the possibilities of creating SDWTs to increase employee productivity and improve employee satisfaction. Court leaders and managers can also benefit significantly from implementing SDWTs. Several courts have established team leadership practices; team leadership represents a positive, unifying, participative solution for effectively improving the court's total organizational performance. Charts and 30 references